Pornokitschtag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-5233592017-12-19T15:15:00+00:00A celebration of geeky pop culture | Reviews and discussion of books, movies, television, music, games and comicsTypePadStar Wars: The Last Jeditag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201bb09e1544b970d2017-12-19T15:15:00+00:002017-12-19T15:15:00+00:00Familiar and yet surprising, The Last Jedi is a worthy installment in the franchise.Erin

And even if you haven’t, unless you’re living under a rock on Jakku, you’ve been so bombarded with hackneyed merchandising that you might as well have. In which case, just get it over with. It’s pointless to struggle; the sarlacc has its tentacle around your ankle, dragging you inexorably toward the bottomless pit that is Disney merch, where you will be slowly digesting Star Wars for the next thousand years, or at least it will bloody well feel like it.

Please pass through the gift shop on your way out.

Sorry, I got sidetracked there. Point is, no spoilers here. (Though I can’t guarantee there won’t be any in the comments, so beware.)

We don’t really need them anyway. Because if you’ve seen The Force Awakens, then you know more or less what to expect from The Last Jedi. That is, a Star Wars film very much in the style of the original trilogy, where you can nod your head to the beat while still being surprised at key moments – all of which is a very good thing.

Jedi picks up where The Force Awakens left off, with Leia and her ever-shrinking fleet limping away from the Imperial – er, First Order – forces, low on fuel and lower on morale, trying to find safe harbour before the eldest Weasley brother blows them out of the sky. Elsewhere on the star destroyer, Kylo Ren is having his ass chewed out by Supreme Leader Snoke, who somehow expects us to take him seriously even though his name sounds like a card game for eight year-olds. Snoke is scornful of his apprentice’s post-patricide depression, mocking Kylo’s scars, physical and emotional, and questioning openly whether he’s made the right choice in his deputy. (Afterwards Kylo, in a fit of pique, smashes his Darth Vader wannabe mask, so we know he’s pissed.) Meanwhile, over on the island of Ahch-To, Rey completes the Baton Pass of Fate by handing over the lightsaber to a grizzled Luke Skywalker.

The movie then splits into three (and a half) distinct storylines: Leia, Poe, and the escaping rebels; Rey, Luke, Chewbacca and some tribblesewoks porgs; and Finn, BB8 and newcomers Rose and DJ, with the half storyline belonging to the occasional glimpse of Kylo Ren and various First Order shenanigans. What follows feels at times like a Star Wars Greatest Hits reel, but mostly in a good way. Mostly.

Jedi paints in the same greyish palette as The Empire Strikes Back, focusing as much on internal conflict as on interstellar dogfighting (though there is no shortage of that either). Kylo’s conflict, and Rey’s, reflect and play off one another, while Luke’s cynicism and regret put him somewhere between the whiney farm boy he once was and the cranky, mischievous old hermit/Jedi Master he met on Dagobah in Empire Strikes Back. Luke’s conflict is arguably the most affecting of the three, if only because we’ve invested in this character for longer, and it’s both surprising and compelling to see how differently he’s turned out than what we might have expected after the end of Return of the Jedi all those years ago. (And for those worried about missing curmudgeonly, wry Han Solo too much in this movie, never fear – Luke’s got you covered.)

When your turn it is, grumpy as me you will be.

Luke’s choices in this movie, and those alluded to from the period between the end of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, are complex and flawed, and some will no doubt take issue with that. To me, it’s not only appropriate for a movie exploring a more nuanced moral universe, but a perfectly plausible progression of Luke’s character, from a conflicted boy driven by purpose to a conflicted man weighed down by bitter experience and left questioning his faith and the absolutes that once drove him. It’s hard to expand on this without getting spoiler-y, but some of the movie’s most interesting moments explore the cracks that can open up between spirituality and religion, and delve deeper into the nature of the Force than anything we’ve seen before. The film also challenges a few of our own tried-and-true beliefs, skilfully subverting tropes and juxtaposing the visions of characters so wrapped up in complexities and distant horizons that they seem paralyzed and those so focused on the here and now that they might just win the battle to lose the war.

Jedi veers further away from the original trilogy than did TFA, though still not very far. At times, it feels as though someone took the scripts from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, tore them up into little pieces and tossed them in the air, then reassembled them randomly. Individual snippets are very much familiar, yet they come together in fresh and surprising ways. That being said, those ways don’t always feel quite as satisfying as they should. Sometimes, they feel… well, random. It’s hard to tell if this is just an unavoidable consequences of mixing up the familiar or something more fundamental.

One of the storylines, in particular, feels a bit too side quest-y and superficial, while another feels repetitive and struggles to gain traction. The movie is also about thirty minutes too long – all of which, I suspect, stems from the same root problem: Namely, that the movie was trying to do a lot, and maybe too much. Three separate storylines is tough to pull off. At times this narrative split works well; at others, the jumping back and forth feels disruptive, and the cliffhanger cutaways too frequent to be effective. It also ends up dragging by the end, if simply as a result of overload. (I was left with that Peter Jackson feeling of holy shit is there another scene??? Which is a sign you’ve overstayed your welcome.)

Even so, there is plenty of excitement, including some genuinely awesome as fuck moments, to carry us past those bumps. As always, the critters delight and amuse. The visuals are stunning, especially in the last act of the movie, and the dialogue and performances stand out as among the best in the franchise (though admittedly the bar isn’t all that high, on the first point especially).

Best In Show: The crystal foxes of Crait.

If you’re the sort to get hung up on canon, there might be a couple of eyebrow-raisers, and some people are probably going to obsess about porgs, but honestly, if you let those things get in the way of your enjoyment, it’s your loss. Because though flawed it might be, it’s still a helluva ride.

Pennywise and Paper-Thin: Why IT’s clown is too two-dimensional to be terrifyingtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201bb09d203d5970d2017-10-30T11:45:00+00:002017-10-30T15:07:23+00:00Scares the shit out of everyone. 8 points.Erin

So, you know the drill: spoilers ahead.

A few months ago, when we rolled out The Official Pornokitsch Taxonomy of Villains ™, I promised two things: An Obsessed, and a Monster. Half of that promise was fulfilled last month with our look at Khan(s). This month, I deliver on the second half by focusing on the most notorious monster of 2017: Pennywise the Dancing Clown, from Stephen King’s It. I’ll mostly be focusing on the 2017 film version, but will reference other versions as appropriate, since the most famous portrayals – i.e. the novel, the 1990s miniseries, and the latest film – all differ in some respects.

So, let me start with the obvious bit, something we’ve all known in the deepest recesses of our beings since childhood:

Clowns are fucking scary.

Why is that? I have a few theories. For one thing, as I learned in twelfth-grade genetics, human beings are programmed by evolution to prefer average features. Average features signal good genes; on the flip side, abnormal features are something to be feared, since they could signal an aberration that might be harmful to us socially, physically, or reproductively. Clowns, with their deliberately exaggerated features, tweak some primeval switch that says, “Run like hell.”

Or maybe it has something to do with the historical origins of the clown, and especially the harlequin variety that is undeniably the creepiest (and is, not coincidentally, the major influence on the costume of the most recent incarnation of Pennywise). The harlequin is thought to descend from a demon character in medieval passion plays. It is, in other words, evil. Even if we aren’t aware of this historical fact, the costumes and behaviours have been refined over the years to inspire dread, even if only on a subconscious level.

Or, you know, it could just be this:

Yeah, maybe I’m overthinking it.

Regardless, clowns are considered by many to be among humankind’s most horrifying creations, right up there with atom bombs and fidget spinners. In tapping into this, Stephen King did what all the best maestros of horror do: anchor their tales in something that tweaks some pre-existing, primordial fear. Like creepy woods, or haunted houses, or haunted houses in creepy woods.

King could have left it there, letting Pennywise’s appearance do most of the work, in the manner of Mike Myers or Leatherface or Freddie Kruger. Instead, he upped the ante by making his creepy clown a mind-reading shapeshifter that could embody the deepest fears of its victims. This was a nice touch, one that worked particularly well in the book, since the 1,000+ page novel was long enough to accommodate so many different incarnations of Pennywise that the author was virtually certain of hitting on one of the reader’s own phobias – spiders, bats, leeches, etc.

Even so, having gone into the movie version with expectations that were more or less perfectly satisfied, Pennywise still left me unmoved.

To be sure, this is no fault of the costume designers or makeup artists. The visuals they created – part harlequin, part spider, part cheetah, part jack-o-lantern – are the stuff of nightmares. Moreover, Bill Skarsgård’s lisping, bulbous, twitching portrayal is genuinely creepy, a sort of psychotic Roger Rabbit using all the tricks of Toon Town to terrify his victims.

Oh hell no.

And yet, beyond a scientific sort of fascination, I found It – the movie, and the creature –to be pretty… meh.

Part of this is undoubtedly personal. Fear, along with sex and humour, is among the most subjective of human experiences. Whether you find something funny or offensive, sexy or a turnoff, scary or just plain cheesy, has at least as much to do with you as with the thing itself. For me, when it comes to horror, less is more; I vastly prefer the disturbing, slow-burning, implied-more-than-seen variety of a Seven or a Blair Witch Project to the slasher variety. (I do enjoy slashers, but they make me laugh rather than scream.) Subtle Pennywise is not, especially in the third act of the film – with the result that I found myself giggling more than cringing. And that’s OK, really. But it does knock It out of the running for world’s scariest monster.

Another issue is the film itself, which had a number of shortcomings, the most obvious being that it was least 30 minutes too long, which resulted in a lot of repetition that drained the tension out of key scenes. To me, it felt as though we’d seen most of Pennywise’s moves by the end of the second act, and since his ability to scare is largely rooted in shock and surprise, this had a pretty deflating effect.

More fundamentally, though, I think it comes down to this: Monsters are kinda boring.

I’ve spent a lot of time in this feature looking at what makes a great villain, at least in my estimation. There are a lot of ingredients, and though most villains don’t tick all the boxes, the great ones always include at least a few of these features. Let’s review:

Well-drawn, layered characters with interesting motivations

Relatable or at least compelling, ideally with some internal conflict

Personal stakes

Complex relationship with the hero(es)

Impressive schemes

Possibility of redemption

Skillz

Realistically, Pennywise, like most monsters, really only ticks the last box. With the result that, for me at least, however cool his tricks, he can’t rise to the level of an Al Swearengen, Cersei Lannister, or Khan (1.0).

The trouble with monsters is that they tend to be too simplistic. However powerful or ruthless, their single-minded desire to kill (usually in order to feed, or to satisfy some other primordial urge) is more animal-like than human, which robs them of that key element of relatability. Without a trace of humanity to them, they might as well be a snowstorm or a shark or a giant city-stomping lizard. Now, there is nothing wrong with city-stomping lizards. They can be extremely entertaining. They’re just not villains in any meaningful sense. They’re more like forces of nature. They also have a tough time surprising us, at least beyond the jack-in-the-box brand of jump scare, because they aren’t deep enough to accommodate much in the way of internal conflict or complex motivations.

King seems to have realized this, so he went to some lengths in the book to add some layers to his monster. Unfortunately – and with the important caveat that it’s been ages since I read the book – these layers serve more to confuse than anything. To render his clown less two-dimensional, King adds another dimension – the Macroverse – and gives Pennywise a cosmic backstory. Instead of being merely a child-eating, shapeshifting clown, Pennywise turns out to be an immortal alien entity that originated in a void containing and surrounding the Universe, whose eternal nemesis is a divine turtle. Or something. This is certainly, er… complex, but hardly makes his villain more relatable.

Another thing. While the filmmakers do a great job of making Pennywise visually unsettling, and his actions in both screen and print versions are certainly disturbing, he is continually thwarted by a bunch of kids. This Scooby-Doo element makes it difficult to take him too seriously. Nor is the problem solved when the kids grow up. If anything, the “adult” version of It is even less impressive. (See in particular the 1990s miniseries, with its cheesy, slow, easily outwittable spider). At no point, in any version so far, can I recall considering Pennywise to be clever. He’s powerful, to be sure, but not especially impressive. Especially once the kids work out that if they mock the devil, he will flee from them, at which point he’s essentially powerless. In the movie, this robs the climax of any real tension, rather like watching the last few minutes of a hockey game where your team is up 6-0. They can scramble around and throw as many bruising hits as they like, but that doesn’t make it exciting, because we all know how it’s going to end.

It sounds like I hated the movie. I didn’t. As I said before, it was more or less exactly what I thought it would be – which was, for the most part, fun. But it did reinforce my theory (prejudice?) that monsters have little to offer other than fun, and while I enjoy popcorn as much as the next person, I’m not going to pretend it’s chateaubriand.

That doesn’t mean Pennywise won’t make a great Halloween costume, or, for those of you talented with a carving knife (or power tools), a fucking kick-ass jack-o-lantern.

It's the tear lines, yo.

And now, the Machine:

Strengths: Reads minds, shapeshifts, and apparently can’t be killed, except possibly by a turtle. He also enjoys torturing people, and is endlessly creative in doing so, which has to count as a strength if your goal is to “salt the meat” with fear.

Weaknesses: Loses his mojo when you cease to fear him. Also, is easily outwitted by children.

A Tale of Two Khanstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201b8d29ff9d3970c2017-09-20T15:15:00+01:002017-09-06T09:21:20+01:00Khan doesn’t actually get a chance to prove his superhuman intellect, because Kirk is such a bonehead.Erin

Spoilers ahead for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and S1:E22 of Star Trek the Original Series.

It was the best of Khans, it was the worst of Khans. It was the film that redeemed its predecessor, and the film that tarnished its predecessor. It was the voyage that went where many others had gone before.

Among Trek fans, the scripture is clear: there is but one Khan, and He has a silver mullet. The existence of a small Benedictine branch of the faithful does nothing to sway the orthodoxy; these poor misguided souls are merely apostates.

So pervasive is this sentiment that 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness, in spite of being broadly well reviewed, was the object of considerable backlash from Trek fans, its many merits overshadowed by this one central flaw. In fact, I’d suggest that the merits of the film’s villain, and of the actor who portrayed him, were similarly overlooked, in some ways unfairly.

I know, I know. I can practically hear the cries of “heresy!” from here. But before you reach for the holy water, hear me out.

There’s no question of who’s the better villain, still less who’s the better Khan. And yet, on paper at least, there should be. By virtually every objective measure, Khan 2.0 (Benedict Cumberbatch) is clearly superior – yet he still falls flat compared to the original. Why is that?

Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the Khaniest Khan of all?

Two things I won’t consider in this analysis: Ethnicity and legacy. On the first, neither actor is South Asian, so that’s not a useful point of comparison.* On the second, it’s silly to argue that Cumberbatch fails simply because his portrayal doesn’t respect Ricardo Montalbán’s “legacy”. If his performance had been half as hammy as his predecessor’s, it would never have worked (just as it wouldn’t have worked if Chris Pine’s Kirk had been a quarter as hammy as William Shatner’s). These films are from different eras, with very different sensibilities, so a straight-up comparison of their portrayals is neither fair nor interesting.

Take those two things away, and what’s left is a pretty good window onto what separates a great villain from a merely adequate one.

Let’s start with the OG.

Khan Noonien Singh first appears in the original series episode, “Space Seed”. The Enterprise comes upon an ancient Earth vessel adrift since the late 1990s, its crew in cryogenic stasis (presumably listening to Fiona Apple’s Sleep to Dream on perpetual loop). The leader wakes up, and before he’s even opened his eyes, the Enterprise’s historian (is that even a thing?) has fallen madly in love with him. Lest we think she’s just a silly, impressionable girl, McCoy declares, “He has a magnetism. Almost electric,” which is clearly his medical opinion, and Kirk later explains to a puzzled Spock that “we can be against him and admire him all at the same time”. In other words, we are shown, but mostly told, that Khan is one irresistible hunk of man-chest. We are also told that he has superhuman strength and intellect.

And yet.

In “Space Seed”, Khan only manages to wreak havoc because Kirk is dumb enough to give this total stranger access to the blueprints of his bloody ship. (Really, Jim? Why not hook the guy up with some keys to the armoury while you’re at it?) Similarly, in Wrath, Khan gains the upper hand because Kirk – in spite of expressly being warned not to – approaches the USS Reliant with his shields down, even though it’s plain to everyone on the bridge that something fishy is going on. Later, Kirk gets caught with his pants down yet again when Chekov betrays him while under the influence of a mind-controlling space bug (the Ceti Eel, which to this day is one of the creepiest, most traumatic things I’ve ever seen on screen).

This is SO NOT OK

Kirk might be forgiven for falling for this trickery had Chekov not literally just finished telling him that he’s been subjected to mind-controlling space bugs. Nobody thought to scan the guy to make sure the space bugs were gone? Bones? Jim? Bueller?

Point being, although we’re repeatedly told that Khan has superhuman intellect, he doesn’t actually get a chance to prove it, because Kirk is such a bonehead.

Then there’s the muscle. Again, we’re told that Khan is supercharged, but apart from bountiful views of that manly chest and an early moment where he hoists Chekov off the ground with one hand, we don’t actually see much evidence of this. (Kirk even manages to beat him down with a pipe in “Space Seed”, seemingly without breaking a sweat.)

Contrast all this to Khan 2.0. Within the first half hour of Into Darkness, he saves the life of a terminally ill child, guns down most of Starfleet’s senior officers, and wipes out an entire patrol of Klingons more or less single-handedly. He patiently allows Kirk to beat on him – over and over and over – until the captain is too exhausted to continue, all the while looking somewhere between bored and amused. He anticipates his enemy’s every move, and shrewdly manipulates Kirk into helping him. Later, he develops a weird affection for crushing people’s skulls with his bare hands. He can jump from thirty-metre heights, resist a Vulcan nerve pinch, and regenerate a dead man with his “super blood”. Plus, he’s got serial killer eyes and a sepulchral voice.

And yet.

Might alone does not a great villain make. In fact, this version of Khan perfectly illustrates the pitfalls of having an overpowered antagonist. For one thing, it opens the door to too many plot holes – chief among them the whole “super blood” angle, which culminates in the deus ex machina moment of Kirk’s resurrection. (If this “super blood” has existed since the 1990s, doctors would presumably have been synthesizing it for centuries.) It also paints the story into a corner, whereby in order to overcome this superhuman foe, either our heroes must achieve something that ought to be out of their grasp, or our villain must do something uncharacteristically stupid. Into Darkness chooses the latter option, with Khan inexplicably failing to consider the possibility that the torpedoes he’s ordered Spock to beam over to his ship might be armed. Of course they would be armed. Even the boneheaded Kirk from Wrath could have called that one.

Even your single man-tear can’t fool us.

I could have lived with these problems were it not for the fact that Khan 2.0 is also completely without soul – and herein lies the fatal flaw. His motivations are too remote and generic to be interesting. He wants to save his crew, whom we’ve never met – oh, and also lay waste to worlds for some reason? These objectives have nothing to do with Kirk and the Enterprise, and his eventual antagonism towards them is purely opportunistic; they are a fly in his ointment, nothing more. So in spite of the film’s best efforts to generate pathos by convincing us that Khan has feels, we really don’t care.

In contrast, the conflict in Wrath of Khan is intensely personal. It turns the above formula on its head: Yes, Khan steals the Genesis torpedo and would presumably have used it to lay waste to worlds, but for him, this is the opportunistic bit. What he really wants is Kirk. He’s waited fifteen years for a chance at revenge, and when it comes, he seizes on it with singular devotion, putting aside all other distractions in his relentless pursuit of our heroes. When his crew protest that he should forget Kirk and be satisfied with his world-killing torpedo, Khan dismisses the idea:

“He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I’ll chase him round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares Maelstrom and round perdition’s flames before I give him up!”

Not only does this obsession keep the tension high, it provides a plausible answer to the problem of how to overcome a villain this powerful: Khan’s lust for revenge is so white-hot, his pride so inflamed, that he would rather die and take Kirk with him than live and rule the galaxy (a rage Kirk cleverly exploits, somewhat making up for his earlier dipshittery). In other words, our heroes don’t really need to overcome this supervillain; he’ll manage that more or less on his own.

These deeply personal stakes are what make the film – and more importantly, it’s what makes Khan, Khan. Absent that, Cumberbatch’s villain is merely John Harrison (the alias he adopts early in the movie). And the thing is, John Harrison is a decent enough villain, stacking up pretty favourably against most of the franchise’s baddies. Cumberbatch, moreover, chews plenty of scenery, and is downright chilling at several key moments. He’s just… soulless.

Into Darkness does its best to fill this void with destruction and mayhem. In this, the film is very much a product of our time, in which we apparently feel the need to turn everything up to eleven. (My biggest complaint about Into Darkness is the casual kill count, especially when Khan crashes a dreadnaught-class starship into downtown San Francisco, scything through skyscrapers and presumably killing thousands, but we don’t really know, because who cares, because that’s just how we like our summer blockbusters these days. Et tu, Star Trek?). In so doing, the movie proves – if more proof were needed – that all the explosions and trench coats in the world can’t disguise a two-dimensional villain.

Meanwhile, the original Khan deserves a better fight than he got, one in which he has the opportunity to show us, instead of just telling us, how badass he really is.

At this point, I hope they give the character a much-deserved rest. But if they ever do resurrect him, I hope they’ll combine the best of these two Khans – the machine (Khan 2.0) and the soul (Khan 1.0). Now that would be a supervillain.

And speaking of machines, it’s time for ours. But since we can’t put both of these very different Khans through at the same time, we’ll stick to Version 1.0.

Weaknesses: Khan’s only real weakness is his single-minded obsession with James T. Kirk, but it’s a pretty debilitating one. I mean, really – the guy has his own starship, a crew of supermen, and a world-destroying/world-creating missile, and he blows it all for an aging admiral in a toupée? Yeesh.

Best Quote: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

Villain Points

Lair: The wreckage of the Botany Bay looks more like a desert bunker than a lair, though you have to give him credit for making a home of it. 1 point.

Toys: A stolen starship, the Genesis torpedo, and a mind-controlling space bug. This is about as good as it gets, folks. 9 points.

Schmes - Complexity: Adopting a thin disguise and hoping your nemesis is too boneheaded to take appropriate precautions is hardly the most sophisticated plan in the world. On the other hand, it worked. 3 points.

Overall Badass Rating: 23

Next month: Wait and see. Oh yes. Yes, indeed. For now, please enjoy the evil of these other villains.

*This isn’t to say the ethnicity of the actor isn’t a valid point of criticism – it is – just that it doesn’t help explain why one Khan is better than the other, since neither measures up in this regard.

Breaking Badass: Only a villain this terrifying could be called 'Chicken'tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201bb09a841fd970d2017-08-15T15:15:00+01:002017-08-01T10:16:11+01:00He looks about as badass as your geeky cousin – which is of course the point.Erin

OK, cue the ritual spoiler warning: If you haven’t seen AMC’s Breaking Bad – and especially Seasons 3 and 4 – you might want to skip this one.

A few months back, I argued that Al Swearengen, saloonkeeper and unofficial mayor of HBO’s Deadwood, was television’s Best Villain Ever. I stand by that assessment, but if there is a runner up, it is surely Gustavo “The Chicken Man” Fring from Breaking Bad. (Not coincidentally, these two shows join HBO’s The Wire in forming the Holy Trinity of TV drama, at least in my books.)

Fring shares some important characteristics with Swearengen – and, for that matter, with Stringer Bell from The Wire. Like both of those villains, Fring is a strategist – ambitious but cool-headed, with the intelligence, patience, and discipline to line up all his pieces before he makes his move, even if that occasionally means letting his enemies knock over a pawn or two. The Official Pornokitsch Taxonomy of Villains™ listed Swearengen as a Kingpin and String as a Pragmatist, and either of those labels would fit Gus Fring pretty well. But he’s got more than a whiff of the Obsessed in him too (more on that later), leaving me undecided as to where exactly he fits best.

Maybe that’s appropriate, since the Chicken Man has been defying expectations from the beginning.

Gus Fring was never meant to be the show’s Big Bad. Originally, he was slated to appear in only a few episodes as the mysterious big fish drug dealer helping high-school-chemistry-teacher-turned-crystal-meth-master-chef Walter White get his product to market. Credit the textured, genuinely chilling performance of Giancarlo Esposito with convincing producers that Gus ought to be a regular cast member, complete with his own backstory and character arc – both of which turned out to be essential to taking the show to the next level. Before Fring, Breaking Bad was a good show. By Season 3, it was television’s best in a long time, and with due respect to the great Bryan Cranston, that had a lot to do with the glut of amazing supporting characters – enough to sustain an entire spinoff prequel, as it happens, the also-excellent Better Caul Saul. The producers of the latter were similarly powerless to resist the pull of El Pollo, and re-watching the episode in which Fring is introduced to audiences for the first time, it’s easy to see why.

When we first glimpse Gus, most of us don’t even realize it. Like Walter, all we know is that we’re looking for a major player in the local drug market, one who’s been dealing meth “in bulk” for twenty years and never been caught. He’s a cautious businessman, so he’s chosen a local fast food chicken joint, Los Pollos Hermanos, to meet – and vet – his would-be suppliers, Walt and Jesse. As Walt’s lawyer, Saul Goodman, explains, “He’s very cautious who he does business with.” Walt waits at the restaurant for hours, but is never approached. “It’s a no-go,” Saul later informs him. The mysterious businessman “didn’t like the cut of your jib.” A determined Walt returns to the restaurant the following day, and after sulking over his curly fries for a few hours, catches the manager giving him side-eye. We’ve seen this guy before: he approached Walt’s table yesterday, smiling blandly from behind wire-rimmed spectacles, to ask if everything was to Walt’s satisfaction. Walt took no notice of him then; chances are, most viewers didn’t either. The Chicken Man hides in plain sight, wiping down fast food tables and pouring out fountain Cokes in a yellow dress shirt and chinos. He looks about as badass as your geeky cousin – which is of course the point.

Can we get fries with that?

When Walt confronts him, the manager keeps up the act a while longer, blinking his great big doe eyes bemusedly, offering to refer Walt to the company’s website. It isn’t until Walt claims that he and Fring are “alike” that the façade melts: The doe eyes harden into something flat and dead; the voice deepens; the smile turns brittle. “I don’t think we’re alike at all, Mr. White,” the Chicken Man says.

If it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, this scene (Season 2, Episode 11) is worth a re-watch. Those few seconds, those few flickers of Esposito’s features, are laced with such quiet menace that when Walt shrinks back in his seat, the reaction seems heroically measured; what he should really be doing is getting the fuck out of there.

Of course, if he had, he would never have found a distributor for his blue meth – and we would have missed out on one of the greatest protagonist/antagonist relationships in television history.

They say a hero is only as good as his villain, and that goes double for antiheroes. A show like Breaking Bad only works if audiences keep rooting for the main character in spite of his actions – at least up to the point where he crosses over from antihero to outright bad guy, by which point we are so invested that we can’t help but keep watching. For that to happen, the antagonist has to be measurably worse than the antihero – a tall order when your antihero is as dark as Walter White.

But don’t worry – the Chicken Man is up to the challenge. Taunt an old man in a wheelchair by bragging about killing his relatives? Check. Poison an entire Mexican drug cartel? Check. Threaten to murder your partner’s infant daughter? Check. Take out your own henchman with a box cutter just to send a message? Why not?

I killed your nephews! Tee hee!

It’s not just what he does, either, but how he does it. He uses violence sparingly, after a great deal of forethought. And he has a keen eye for drama, though he evinces none himself: He kills impassively, methodically, slowly. Like a man acutely aware of how to use human emotion to his advantage – all the while repressing his own.

The key word here is repressing. At first glance, Fring seems to epitomize the dispassionate, it’s-just-business type of killer, but it’s a lie: Gus is actually keeping a lid on some pretty violent emotions. As we learn over the course of Season 3, Fring is nursing a couple of lifelong vendettas – blood feuds so bitter that he’s willing to pass up the chance to kill his enemies quickly if it means he can watch them suffer. That makes him a lot more interesting than your garden variety coldblooded killer. It’s not just the aloofness with which he commits violence, but the suspicion that he’s barely holding it together; that behind the dispassionate killer lurks something even worse.

Consider the aforementioned drug cartel murder. Fring and his right-hand man, Mike (played by that other Master of Subtle Expressions, Jonathan Banks), have been summoned to the hacienda of Don Eladio, head of a Mexican cartel under whose thumb Fring has been operating for twenty years. Fring offers Eladio and his henchmen a bottle of expensive tequila with which to toast to a new business arrangement. The don hoists his glass, but he’s no fool: He waits for Gus to drink first. The Chicken Man downs his shot and then waits, apparently for quite a while, as the party kicks into high gear before excusing himself to go to the bathroom.

He’s not gone long before henchmen start pitching over. The tequila has been poisoned. Gus must have imbibed the stuff himself, and has gone to the bathroom to purge. You’d think he’d be in a bit of a hurry, what with the deadly toxin seeping out of his stomach and the angry men with machine guns everywhere, but no – he takes the time to remove his suit jacket, fold it, and set it aside; to take a hand towel and lay it across the floor, so as to avoid getting bathroom grime on his meticulously pressed trousers; to rinse his mouth and dab at the corners with a cloth. And when it’s over, and he returns poolside to see Mike garrotting the last of the survivors, he just surveys the massacre impassively.

The scene would be chilling on its own, without any of the backstory, but it so happens that Gus is serving more than one agenda here. Not only is he eliminating an impediment to his business, he’s exacting his long-deferred revenge against Don Eladio, who murdered Fring’s business partner (and possible lover) some twenty years earlier. You’d think a guy who’d just knocked off a lifelong arch-enemy would show a bit more emotion. A fist pump, at least.

So, yeah – Walter White has a pretty dark foil to play against. But their relationship goes deeper than that. Gus’s ruthlessness has its own gravitational pull, dragging Walt even further to the dark side as he struggles to survive. And this relationship is reciprocal, as each man is forced to greater extremes in an effort to overcome the other. They’re locked in a death spiral, and they both know it – but they can’t let go, since neither man’s business can succeed without the other. Breaking Bad was always about Walter White’ fall from grace, but once he’s locked in combat with the Chicken Man, it’s less a fall than a skydive without a parachute – in tandem.

Of course, it had to end somewhere, and there is perhaps no greater testament to creator Vince Gilligan’s affection for his villain than the manner of the Chicken Man’s demise.

The author of that demise is Hector “Tio” Salamanca, the only person in the world Gus hates more than the now-dead Don Eladio. The latter ordered the killing of Gus’s partner, but it was Tio who pulled the trigger, kicking off a tit-for-tat blood feud that Gus is pretty sure he’s won. After all, Tio is in a wheelchair now, mute and full of impotent rage. Gus delights in mocking his vanquished foe face-to-face – an indulgence that will cost him when, with the help of Walt, Tio detonates a suicide bomb concealed in his wheelchair.

The scene is already pretty over the top, but Gilligan goes one step further, having Gus emerge from the bombed-out room with his face half blown off, the most gruesome Two Face you’ve ever seen (at least on television), but somehow still standing upright. He even pauses in the hallway to straighten his tie before he dies. He’s just that fastidious.

A dangerously cartoonish scene for a show that otherwise cleaved to realism, but the internet cheered anyway. If Gilligan couldn’t quite contain himself, well – neither could we.

Of course, through the magic of television, Gus Fring is back, taking his long foreshadowed place in Better Call Saul. (Ah, prequels.) As delighted as I am to see him, I can’t help feeling that he doesn’t quite belong there. Saul is a subtler beast than its predecessor; if Breaking Bad was a bold Pollock splatter painting, Saul is a landscape in soft, boozy watercolours. I’m honestly not sure how a character as frightening as Fring fits in. If he does, it probably needs to be in some watered-down form (like watered-down Saul and super-diluted Mike). But is that really what we want?

I guess we’ll find out.

And now, the Machine:

Strengths: Smart, cautious, methodical, and utterly ruthless. Never loses his cool unless he wants to, and even then, everything he does has been carefully calibrated to send a message. Always manages to stay one step ahead of his enemies – until he isn’t.

Weaknesses: In a word, Tio. Fring’s blind hatred for Hector Salamanca makes him predictable at precisely the moment he can’t afford to be, which proves his undoing.

Best Quote: “This is what comes of blood for blood.”

Villain Points:

Lair: A fast-food chicken joint might not be the most glamorous of digs, but it makes a great cover. Still, the whiff of french fries probably clings to those yellow dress shirts for a while. 3 points.

The Official Pornokitsch Taxonomy of Villainstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201b8d288af09970c2017-06-08T14:15:00+01:002017-06-08T14:15:00+01:00OK, maybe not so much “official” as “preliminary and largely arbitrary”, but hey – you have to start somewhere.Erin

So we’ve been at this Villain of the Month thing for a while now – since August 2016, to be precise – and by this point we’ve accumulated an interesting roster of villains. There have been 8 in total (we lost a month in there somewhere due to shifting schedules), which break down along the following lines:

So far, the baddest ass is the White Witch at 26 (ironic, given the title of the piece) and the most outclassed is Stringer Bell at 18. The ladies out-badass the men by a considerable margin, averaging 22.7 to the men’s 19.8.

So what does this all mean? Absolutely nothing. But that isn’t to say there aren’t some interesting patterns hiding in there.

I did make a conscious effort to avoid the most obvious one: white dudes sporting vaguely English accents. In this, I’ve been only moderately successful, though I hope that once my sample size increases, my percentages will improve. I also tried to balance various types of media, though there’s a shocking lack of graphic novels and comic books in there (and maybe video games?), which I suppose I should rectify.

What about other patterns that I didn’t control for? There are a few. For one, all three female villains are from books. Coincidence? Or is it fair to say that female villains – under-represented in general – are especially under-represented on the screen? TV villainesses in particular seem rare to me, at least beyond soap opera circles.

The most interesting patterns, though, emerge at a more granular level, when we look at things like motivations and tactics. Last month, for example, I argued that Dolores Umbridge and the Operative, while superficially very different, actually belong to the same species of villain. That got me thinking about the other villains, and I realized that, subconsciously, I’d been selecting along another dimension: character archetype.

Viewed from the perspective of tactics, personality traits, and motivations, the villains suddenly start to order themselves along some pretty familiar lines. And so, based on our robust sample size of 8, I give you:

The Official Pornokitsch Taxonomy of Villains ™!

OK, maybe not so much “official” as “preliminary and largely arbitrary”, but hey – you have to start somewhere.

First up, we have the True Believer (the Operative, Dolores Umbridge). True Believers have a cause to which they are faithfully devoted. That’s not to say they lack other ambitions – wealth, for example, or glory – but those take a back seat to one all-important ideological goal. For the Operative, that goal is creating “a world without sin”. For Umbridge, it’s a fascist regime ruled by the Ministry of Magic. Villains who obsequiously serve a Dark Lord (e.g. Bellatrix Lestrange) or fight to preserve the existing order (e.g. Agent Smith) would also fall into this category. For me, the most interesting True Believers are those fighting for a cause the audience could nominally get behind (e.g. the aforementioned world without sin), but whose methods are beyond the pale.

A related but distinct species of villain is the Chosen One (Loki, the White Witch). This type of villain is utterly convinced of his own special snowflakeness. S/he is destined to rule, and once the rest of us plebes accept that and get down to some proper worship, all will be well. Loki is the quintessential example of this archetype, being “burdened with glorious purpose”. Voldemort, Darth Vader, General Zod – some of the most notorious villains of all time belong in this category. Done well, they can be delightful and amusing (Loki, Zod). If taken too seriously, though, they can be downright dull (Voldesnore).

Also closely related is the Obsessed. This archetype shares the True Believer’s single-minded devotion to a specific goal, but there’s a crucial difference: for the Obsessed, the goal is purely personal. Your standard issue revenge-driven baddie belongs in this category – see, for example, Khan from Star Trek or Nero from Star Trek. Villains fixated on reaching some kind of utopia also qualify (such as Sybok from Star Trek and Soran from Star Trek), as do those seeking to score an all-powerful McGuffin (Kruge from Star Trek and Krall from Star Trek… seriously, I could do this all day). Usually, in pursuing the object of his obsession, the villain is the architect of his own demise, handily providing the moral of the story. The McGuffin quest, in particular, often ends… poorly.

We haven’t tackled an Obsessed villain in this feature yet, but I see a certain silver mullet in our future.

Moving on. At the other end of the spectrum is the Pragmatist (Stringer Bell, Hans Gruber). Motivations for this type of villain are simple and selfish, and they usually boil down to cold hard cash. Pragmatists aren’t burdened with martyr complexes or delusions of grandeur. Oh, sure – they’d prefer to have your respect. But at the end of the day, their main priority is to pull the job and cash out so they can spend the rest of their lives sitting on a beach, earning 20%. Pragmatists aren’t stubborn; they’ll readily change tacks if Plan A isn’t working, including stabbing their besties in the back if that’s what it takes (we’re looking at you, String).

Next we have the Kingpin (Al Swearengen, Cersei Lannister). Unlike the Chosen One, these villains don’t tend to have any special powers to speak of, relying instead on wit and grit to manipulate their way into powerful positions. Kingpins are quintessential schemers, using deceit, blackmail, seduction, intimidation – pretty much any dirty trick they can dream up to claw their way to the top of the heap. Not that the “heap” in question needs to be particularly glorious. Depending on the Kingpin, s/he might be perfectly content to rule over a modest fief (e.g. Swearengen). The essential thing is that they rule – and oftentimes this need springs from a desire to prove something. Kingpins have usually felt powerless or preyed upon at some point in the past, and now they’re out to flex their muscle and show ‘em all. Kingpins take particular pleasure in having clawed their way from nothing, and are acutely aware that it could all be taken away one day. This means that the Kingpin often has a whiff of desperation and paranoia about him (or, in the case of Cersei, more than a whiff), which makes this one of the more interesting villain archetypes.

A couple more archetypes occur to me that haven’t been covered here. There’s the Psycho, who – in the words of Alfred in The Dark Knight, “just want[s] to watch the world burn”. Obviously, the Joker (or at least that version of him) is the perfect example. Hannibal Lecter might be another, and maybe Howard Payne from Speed?

There’s also the Monster, à la Terminator, Predator, Frankenstein, Dracula, etc. I’m distinguishing this category from beasts like, say, Jaws or Godzilla, because I don’t think of non-sentient creatures as villains per se. They’re more like forces of nature. (Although some creatures, like Pacific Rim’s kaiju or even Ridley Scott’s aliens, might be borderline – it’s not altogether clear whether they’re sentient or not.) Monsters are most interesting when they’re compelled by their own natures (e.g. Dracula), as opposed to just… dicks (e.g. Predator).

So… based on this, looks like I’m due for a Psycho, a Monster, and an Obsessed.

What do you think – are there other categories I missed? Have I misfiled anyone? Let us know in the comments!

The Operative: Joss Whedon’s most political villain?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201b7c8f5007c970b2017-05-05T11:45:00+01:002017-05-08T12:05:04+01:00One of the most essential features of True Believers is their tendency to bend reality to their will.Erin

Warning: This month’s post spoils the shit out of 2005’s Serenity, the feature film culmination of Joss Whedon’s gone-too-soon TV space western, Firefly. So if you haven’t seen it, (a) what is the matter with you and (b) stop reading immediately.

It was Dolores Umbridge that got me thinking about the Operative. I know – because they have so much in common, right? One is a cowardly shrew of a witch with no discernible fighting ability, while the other is a mild-mannered, stone-cold killing machine. And yet they do have a lot in common, if you scratch just beneath the surface. They’re both government employees acting on behalf of something bigger and largely invisible. And they both belong to that rarest – and arguably most dangerous – species of villain, the True Believer.

The Operative might just be the truest True Believer I’ve ever come across. His dedication to the cause is so absolute that he’s practically a cyborg. He’s such a cog in the machine that he doesn’t even have a name, so ruthless and relentless that you could swap him out for the Terminator and no one would notice. All this we’re given to understand in the space of a single scene – the opening scene, as it happens.

Serenity begins with a desperate rescue operation: Simon Tam is busting his little sister, River, out of a secret government facility where she’s been experimented on for years. The government in question, a shadowy interplanetary body known as the Alliance, has conditioned River to become a living weapon, giving her extraordinary fighting abilities that can be manipulated through subliminal suggestion. Not only that, River happens to be psychic, making her extra valuable – and a major liability should she ever escape, since she’s been psychically absorbing government secrets for years. When Simon arrives on the scene, the facility’s security squad fights tooth and nail to keep her, but ultimately fails.

As we watch Simon and River escape, the scene suddenly freezes: what we’re witnessing isn’t the actual event, but a holographic record of it, and we’re not watching alone. The Operative observes the scene impassively, hands folded behind his back, Spock-like. When the scientist in charge of the facility storms into the records room and demands to see the Operative’s clearance, the latter offers a mild apology and places his hand upon a touchscreen, and the computer primly declares, “Parliamentary override.”

The scientist stiffens. He’s afraid now. And it turns out he was right to be, because a few minutes later, he’s face-down on the floor with a sword in his guts.

The Operative has kindly offered to facilitate seppuku, the ancient samurai ritual in which a disgraced warrior takes his own life. He performs this killing matter-of-factly, not even waiting until it’s over to begin issuing crisp instructions to the scientist’s assistant while her boss slowly and noisily expires on the point of his sword. But he’s not entirely heartless, pausing mid-sentence to reassure the dying man that he is currently experiencing a good death. “There’s no shame in this. A man’s death, a man who has done fine works.” Um, thanks?

There are no small details in this scene. The juxtaposition of the Operative’s mild manners with his ruthless, efficient killing is in itself chilling. But there’s more. Perhaps because we won’t be spending all that much time with the Operative over the course of the film, Whedon stuffs this scene with as many cues about his villain as possible. When the scientist describes Simon Tam’s rescue as “madness”, the Operative begs to differ: “It’s love, in point of fact. Something a good deal more dangerous.” He recognizes zeal when he sees it – as well he should, since he’s clearly brimming with it. If his affection for bushido – a famously uncompromising code of honour – weren’t evidence enough, he’s also big on religious references. (His habit of mentioning the Seven Deadly Sins, usually while on the cusp of committing violence, is reminiscent of Samuel L. Jackson’s Ezekiel 25:17 speech in Pulp Fiction). It’s a master class in showing without telling – which makes it all the more clunky when, later in the film, numerous characters go out of their way to tell us what kind of man the Operative is. In case we showed up at the theatre late, maybe? Or were still getting popcorn?

Anyway. What interests me about this character, and his archetype in general, is that he’s the ultimate study in the ends justifying the means. Though he probably considers himself a good man, the Operative readily acknowledges that the acts he commits are evil. He can live with that because he genuinely believes he’s working toward a greater good – one so important that there is literally nothing he is not prepared to do to achieve it. He spends most of the film looking determined but empathetic, apologizing and patiently explaining why he’s about to ram his sword through your guts. As if, once he’s explained it, you’ll just shrug and say, “Well, fair enough then.”

Consider this exchange with the movie’s main hero, Malcolm Reynolds. Mal has just discovered that every ally, every friend who’s ever sheltered him has been murdered by the Operative. As he sits staring numbly at the smoke rising outside the window his ship, the assassin himself appears on a computer screen, looking genuinely remorseful:

“I’m sorry. If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. You should have taken my offer. Or did you think none of this was your fault?”

“I don’t murder children.”

“I do, if I have to.”

“Why? Do you even know why they sent you?”

“It’s not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.”

“So me and mine gotta lay down and die so you can live in your better world?”

(The Operative looks sadly amused.) “I’m not going to live there. There’s no place for me there, any more than there is for you. Malcolm, I’m a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.”

Admittedly, this isn’t one of Whedon’s subtler moments. But then, there isn’t anything particularly subtle about this brand of thinking, and it’s all too prevalent in the real world. Not just among terrorists and fanatics, either; the so-called “good guys” are every bit as prone to rationalize their actions in this way. World War II offers some of the most egregious examples, none more so than the twin atrocities that brought it to an end. Do the ends justify the means? International ethicists and political philosophers have been grappling with that question for decades. It’s a debate that can never really be resolved, because the answer fundamentally depends on your worldview.

There’s no question where Whedon comes down on it, though, and he can’t resist rubbing his villain’s nose in it – along with the audience’s. My biggest complaint about Serenity is that I think Whedon goes overboard here, revelling in the defeat of his True Believer a little too much, and for a little too long. By the time Mal and the Operative have their final showdown, the audience already knows the truth: that in its pursuit of a “world without sin”, the Alliance has committed the greatest sin in the galaxy, killing some thirty million people and turning another thirty thousand or so into a sub-species of murderous maniacs knows as Reavers. In other words, the Operative has sold his soul for a cause that turns out to be morally bankrupt. We know this, but the Operative doesn’t, so Mal straps him to a pole and makes him watch a video revealing the truth.

Fine, so far as it goes, but Whedon isn’t satisfied with this climax; he has to light a cigarette and linger over it. Not only do we have to listen to the video all over again, we have to watch the Operative watching it. The camera zooms in just enough to let us see the glimmer of tears in the Operative’s eyes: Whedon wants to make sure we witness the precise moment the man’s heart breaks. But wait – we’re not done. The Operative could still have Mal and his friends killed – they’re enemies of the state, after all – but he doesn’t. “Stand down,” he tells his men, sadly. Oh, and still not done: we have the denouement, in which the Operative hides Mal and his crew and repairs his ship. Mal says he never wants to see the Operative again. “You won’t,” the Operative says, sadly. “There’s nothing left to see.” He turns away. Sadly.

Not only is this entirely over the top, it doesn’t ring true to me. One of the most essential features of True Believers is their tendency to bend reality to their will. Faced with facts that don’t fit into their worldview, they attempt to torture the truth into submission, and if that doesn’t work, they just delude themselves. Would the Operative just accept the account he’s watching on that screen, instantly and without question? No way. He’d call it fake news, and if that didn’t work, he’d concoct some narrative to rationalize it. No, Whedon’s True Believer is a tad too credulous for my liking.

Of course, even this over-the-top stinker of an ending isn’t enough to dampen my love for this film. Sadly.

And now, the Machine.

Strengths: He’s smart, strong, meticulous, and you can’t make him angry. He’s so Spock-like he even does a nerve pinch thing of his own, paralyzing his victims before running them through with a sword. (How weird is that?) A cunning and ruthless tactician, and oh yeah – he has super secret clearance and the whole Alliance fleet as his disposal. Jeebus.

Weaknesses: Absolutely none – until he finds out that his whole mission is a lie, and then he folds like a house of cards. He’s like an Ultimate Killing Machine with a handy “off” switch.

Dolores Umbridge is the scariest villain in Harry Pottertag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201b8d26392eb970c2017-03-30T11:45:00+01:002017-03-30T08:43:58+01:00She’s not the toughest or the cruellest or even the most cunning, but it doesn’t matter. She’s something much more sinister: an evil bureaucrat.Erin

Yes, you read that right. In a world populated with Death Eaters, Dementors, and Dark Lords, where giant snakes possess the dead and werewolves thirst for the blood of children, the diminutive, frilly-frocked schoolmarm from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the absolute worst.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a moment to consider the competition. Sure, the Dark Lord is all dark and lordly, but he’s also pretty one-dimensional. His motivations aren’t particularly complex or original. He’s hateful to everyone and everything, so there’s no chance of us sympathizing with him. He’s even hideously ugly, just to hammer the point home. In short, he’s so thoroughly eeeeevil that there isn’t room for much else, and as I’ve argued before, eeeeevil is dull.

Bellatrix Lestrange is… mostly strange. Her brand of psychopathy is too cartoonish to be genuinely chilling. Draco Malfoy is a child, and his father is basically just a grown-up version of his snivelling, sneering kid, so we can’t really take him all that seriously either. And Snape… well, he isn’t really a proper villain, is he?

Which brings us back to Umbridge. She’s not the toughest or the cruellest or even the most cunning, but it doesn’t matter. She’s something much more sinister: an evil bureaucrat.

Those manic eyes. That brittle smile. This woman is terrifying.

The words “evil bureaucrat” might not send a shiver down every spine, but if you’ve ever worked for a bureaucracy, or run afoul of one, then you understand the terrible potential of such an adversary. A skilled bureaucrat can wield tremendous power. They know how to pull the levers of great lumbering machines, behemoths that can pummel you into the pavement. Think of them like the human pilots of those giant robots in Pacific Rim: on their own, not so impressive, but put them in a jaeger, and they can smash, slash, and blast their way through just about anything. Such is the canny bureaucrat.

Umbridge’s jaeger is the Ministry of Magic, and she uses its full arsenal of discretionary powers to come after Harry and his friends. Not only that, she uses it to come after the teachers at Hogwarts, and even the almighty Dumbledore is powerless to stop her. This last marks a turning point in the series. Until now, the teachers have been the ultimate authorities, practically demigods in the eyes of the students (and thus, the reader). For much of Phoenix, however, the faculty are every bit as cowed as the students, and several of them are even run off the property. It’s an unsettling development, a bit like that moment in childhood when you realize your parents are just people after all, and not the invincible, all-knowing beings you once took them for.

Which is not a bad analogy, come to think of it, because in many ways, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix marks a sort of coming of age for the series. The pivot point, if you will, between children’s series and something darker. If the pivot first comes in the final pages of Goblet of Fire, with the death of Cedric Diggory and the reappearance of Voldemort, it’s Phoenix where this new direction takes shape.

Appropriately, the first villain Harry faces on this new path is arguably the most adult of the series’ villains. As we established last month, the villains in children’s books tend to be simpler (and, paradoxically, more brutally evil) than their adult fiction counterparts. This is certainly true of Voldemort and most of the Death Eaters. Umbridge’s nuance sets her apart from that crew. And it’s this nuance, this realism, that makes her the scariest of all.

For one thing, unlike Voldemort – and indeed most of Rowling’s villains – she doesn’t telegraph her evilness from miles away. One of Rowling’s signature moves is offering clues about her characters through the phonetics or etymologies of their names: Voldemort, Malfoy, Lestrange. Dolores Umbridge offers no such whiff of malevolence. Neither does her person: she’s described as short, girlish, and outrageously twee, “like somebody’s maiden aunt”. Her mannerisms, too, are deceptively unassuming. She’s a master of passive aggression, disguising her threats behind delicate hem-hems and I-do-beg-your-pardons. In this way, she manages to worm herself into the fold at the Ministry – and eventually at Hogwarts – without anyone being the wiser about her motivations until it’s too late.

And speaking of motivations, here’s where things get really sinister. Not only is Umbridge more realistic as a person, her motivations and methods are very much rooted in the real world. Specifically, in fascism. Not casual fascism, mind you – the soft sort of arbitrary authority every teenager rails against – but the real deal, the kind that genuinely believes the state should enjoy an unquestioned monopoly over power, loyalty, and values. The kind that says some races are inherently inferior and should be ruthlessly controlled. The kind that that turns people against one another, and progressively curtails rights and freedoms until all that’s left is a single leader, accountable to no one, against which ordinary citizens have no legal recourse.

The story of Hogwarts’s descent into authoritarianism is meticulous in its telling. Rowling spares us none of the trappings of early twentieth century fascism, from the endless executive decrees to the increasingly brutal tactics to the student Inquisitorial Squad. Racism – in Umbridge’s case, against half-humans like Hagrid and the centaur Firenze – is on full display. She even uses the obfuscating jargon of a bureaucrat:

“Let us move forward, then, into a new era of openness, effectiveness, and accountability, intent on preserving what ought to be preserved, perfecting what needs to be perfected, and pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited…”

And the thing is – and this is key – unlike villains in the previous books, Umbridge doesn’t work for Voldemort. She would squeal in horror at the very suggestion. The man she does work for, the fatuous Minister of Magic, is as terrified of the Dark Lord as anyone, but doesn’t believe Voldemort has truly returned. Ignorant and endlessly self-aggrandizing, Minister Fudge is the perfect puppet for Voldemort, unwittingly throwing the wizarding world into chaos, leaving it divided and distrustful. Umbridge, for her part, is a true believer, fighting – in her mind – the good fight, utterly oblivious to the ways in which her methods till the soil for evil to sprout.

It’s about as real-world as it gets – a little too real-world for comfort these days, frankly.

Before I get too political, let’s turn to The Machine, but first – I’d be remiss if I didn’t spare a word for Imelda Staunton, who does such a brilliant job of bringing Umbridge to life in the films. I struggle to think of an on-screen portrayal that more faithfully captures the literary version, right down to the twinkle of unhinged zeal in her eyes. As much as I loathed Dolores Umbridge, Staunton made me want to see more of her.

In the movies, that is.

Strengths: Umbridge is no dummy. She knows when you’re playing her, and she’s pretty resourceful about getting her way. Her direct line to the Minister of Magic helps, giving her the authority to do pretty much whatever she damn well likes.

Weaknesses: Struggles to control her tongue and her temper, especially around half-humans. Massively unpopular, leading to pretty much everyone – students and teachers alike – opposing her just for the sake of it. Not a particularly powerful witch, either, and most definitely a coward.

Best Quote: “I think they deserve rather more than detentions.”

Villain Points:

Lair: An office full of kitsch decorations, including cat-themed china, vases of dried flowers, and lacy covers and cloths. More off-putting than scary, though the fireplace that lets you confer magically with anyone is worth at least 2 points.

Toys: A magic wand made of birch and dragon heartstring, plus a pen that can slice words into your flesh and write with your own blood. Not bad. 5 points.

Henchmen: Filch, the Inquisitorial Squad, and her own pet Minister of Magic. Put together, they reign over Hogwarts with an iron fist. 5 points.

Schemes - Scope: I might be stretching it, but I have a feeling this woman would have become Minister and presided over a humans-only dictatorship if she could have. 5 points.

Schemes - Complexity: She’s resourceful, but mainly reactive, and eventually she runs out of rope. 2 points.

Wolverine rides off into the sunset - with heart, style, and more than a few scarstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201bb09806101970d2017-03-06T11:45:00+00:002017-03-06T11:45:00+00:00“Nature made me a freak. Man made me a weapon. And God made it last too long.”Erin

If you’re even slightly interested in seeing Logan, you probably know that it’s getting rave reviews. So much so that for some people, it’s going to be tough for it to live up to the hype. So let me say right out of the gate that Logan isn’t a perfect movie. But it is a very good one, and a significant enough departure from previous instalments in the X-Men franchise that your enjoyment (or lack thereof) of the earlier movies probably isn’t a very good predictor of whether you’ll like this one. On the other hand, if you’re a fan of Westerns – and specifically the gritty, melancholy, washed-up-gunslinger-reluctantly-takes-on-one-more-job trope, this film is for you.

All he’s missing is the hat

There’s nothing terribly original in this observation. In fact, you probably won’t come across a single review of Logan that doesn’t mention its resemblance to a Western. The comparison is impossible to miss, and that’s because director James Mangold doesn’t want you to miss it. He’s been priming us since the trailer, with its opening shots of a grizzled Logan squinting out over a dust-choked horizon to the soundtrack of Johnny Cash’s Hurt. Mangold wants us to understand what kind of film this is – and what it isn’t. Which is smart, because the end result is about as far removed from the typical Marvel superhero movie as it could possibly be. TheAvengers, Doctor Strange and the like taught us to expect spectacle and flash. Instead, what Logan delivers is stripped down, visceral, and intimate. If Doctor Strange is Beyoncé; Logan is… well, Johnny Cash.

The film is probably best summed up in this shot:

It is, in other words, a movie about a deeply scarred man looking in the mirror.

The worldbuilding in Logan takes a back seat to character and plot. The movie opens on a vaguely post-apocalyptic landscape; we’re given the visual cues of a major upheaval, but never much of the context. All we know is that it’s 2029 and mutants are slowly becoming extinct: none have been born in over twenty years, and those that remain are well past their prime. The X-Men are gone – tragedy is hinted at, but never fully explained – and as far as we know, only Logan and Professor X are left, hiding out in an abandoned smelting plant in Mexico (along with a reformed Caliban, who appeared briefly and forgettably in the entirely forgettable X-Men Apocalypse). Logan works as a chauffeur by night. By day, he does his best to care for the nonagenarian Charles, now suffering from dementia. No longer able to control his considerable powers, Charles is a danger to himself and others. So much so that he’s one of the most wanted men in America, his brain having been officially classified as a “weapon of mass destruction” following an incident in Westchester some years previous. To dampen his powers, Logan keeps him in a derelict water tank that vaguely resembles a rusted-out Cerebro, a poignant reminder of the man Charles used to be, and how far he’s fallen.

The relationship between Logan and the enfeebled Charles is deeply affecting, by turns bitter, warm, funny, and utterly heart-breaking. As someone who spent the past year watching my own father care for his dad – similarly wheelchair-bound and suffering from dementia – I found it almost too close to the bone. The writing is spot-on, and both Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart knock it out of the park. Charles’s confusion, anguish, and misdirected anger is pitch-perfect, and the grim determination with which Logan deals with it… well, let’s just say it resonated. In all honesty, those scenes would not be out of place in an Oscar-worthy drama.

Into this bleak situation steps Laura, a young Mexican girl with… um, anger management issues. She is, as revealed in the trailer, a mutant. Not just any mutant, either: one with exactly the same powers as Logan. Bad men are after her, and at Charles’s insistence, a very (very) reluctant Logan agrees to help smuggle her across the Canadian border. The choice of Canada as the safe haven could be coincidence – in what is perhaps a sign of the times, I’ve seen no fewer than three movies/shows recently that take place in a future where only Canada is deemed safe – but I suspect it’s deeper than that. Logan’s journey to Canada is, literally and metaphorically, a journey home.

Because of course this movie is called Logan, and for all its chase scenes, side plots, and wonderful relationships, it is, at its heart, a movie about a man coming to terms with who he is at the end of his life. This is what makes it a Western, and also what makes it great. It doesn’t side-step the superhero aspect; we still see plenty of adamantium claws, robot arms, psychic paralysis, and other nifty tricks. But these aren’t the centre of the movie. They’re props rather than the main attraction. In this, Logan feels more like a DC movie than a Marvel one; think Batman Begins or Man of Steel. Not in terms of the overall quality of the movie, but in its emphasis on character, the close-up look at how these powers set the hero apart, not just physically but emotionally, and especially morally.

More than any of those movies, though, and certainly more than the typical MCU fare, Logan is brutally violent – perhaps overly so. While the kill count doesn’t compare to most comic book movies, the bloodletting is much more intimate and graphic. Logan earns its R rating and then some. You could argue that this gives the violence more impact, and drives home the central theme of Logan’s regret (“Nature made me a freak. Man made me a weapon. And God made it last too long.”) Paradoxically, though, the movie treads pretty lightly over eleven year-old Laura’s own role in some of the film’s most brutal sequences. Logan gives her a brief talking-to about this near the end of the movie, but on the whole it’s shrugged off pretty casually, which undermines the overall effect.

I also wish the bad guys had been a little more noteworthy. As it is, they’re one of the few things taken straight from the typical X-Men playbook: heartless scientist/military/corporate types bent on creating the ultimate killing machine. This wasn’t especially interesting the first twenty times we saw it. At this point, it’s downright tired.

Really, though, I’m quibbling. Jackman says he reckons this is his last outing as Wolverine, and if so, he’s sent the character off right. As for director Mangold, he’s rekindled my faith in the superhero movie with heart.

Al Swearengen - Saloonkeeper, Kingpin, and Total Cocksuckertag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201b8d2638d80970c2017-02-28T11:45:00+00:002017-02-28T11:45:00+00:00If the Bible shows salvation being delivered in a barn, Deadwood gives us civilization birthed in horseshit, mud, and moral quagmire. Erin

WARNING: This month’s post includes spoilers for HBO’s Deadwood. It also includes bad language, because Deadwood.

Let me say first that you should all be extremely proud of me for making it this far before indulging myself with my favourite villain of all time, Al Swearengen. Come to think of it, Al isn’t just my favourite villain, he’s my favourite TV character of all time, period. So the fact that I made it through five Villains of the Month before scratching that itch shows remarkable restraint, don’t you think? Yes, thank you, I think so too.

If you’re not familiar with Al Swearengen, saloon/whorehouse owner and honorary King of Deadwood, then you haven’t seen HBO’s celebrated Shakespearean western – in which case, you should stop what you’re doing right now and binge watch it. Because it so happens that you’ve missed out on the network’s most brilliant show – which, considering the consistent quality of HBO programming, pretty much makes Deadwood the most brilliant show ever made. Yes, you read that right: I said Best. Show. Ever. Go ahead, try to argue with me. I WILL TAKE YOU ALL.

Ahem. Where were we?

Ah, yes. Al. Now before we get started, let me anticipate a possible objection. Some might be tempted to argue that Al doesn’t really qualify as a villain, since he occasionally allies himself with the show’s heroes, including Sheriff Seth Bullock, Deputy Charlie Utter, and eventually even the Widow Garret, whose feckless husband Al had tossed off a cliff in the early episodes of Season 1. Fair point. But I’d argue that even though Al often works alongside the good guys, it would be a mistake to consider him one of them. After all, we’re talking about the sort of man who’s willing to murder an orphaned child to cover up his crimes. And if by Season 3 he’s drifted into antihero territory, it’s not because he’s gone soft. Joining forces with Sherriff Bullock isn’t a matter of shared values, but of expediency. It’s like the Joker teaming up with Batman – and actually, that’s not a bad analogy, because like Batman, Seth Bullock is a pretty dark hero in his own right.

Villain or antihero, Swearengen isn’t all that impressive on paper. He’s a pimp, a murderer, and “when chance affords” a thief, but he’s not particularly artful at any of these. He operates a low-end whorehouse, runs a pretty transparent con, and solves most of his problems in the same crude fashion: by cutting throats, often in his own office. (A running joke has Al on hands and knees with a horsehair brush and a bucket of soapy water, congratulating himself on how well he scrubs a bloodstain.) Any serious law enforcement would have seen him at the end of a rope years ago, and even a modest challenge to his power, like that posed by rival saloon owner Cy Tolliver, stitches him up for episodes at a time. He can barely hold his own in a fair fight, so he avoids them wherever possible, relying on his henchmen to do most of the dirty work. Not exactly the stuff of greatness.

The thing is, Swearengen doesn’t aspire to greatness, not in any real sense. He thinks of himself as a survivor, and from the glimpses of backstory we’re given, it’s tough to argue. The phrase troubled childhood doesn’t quite cover it. Raised in an orphanage after his prostitute mother abandoned him, Swearengen’s ambitions don’t stretch much beyond clawing his way to the top of the shit pile he grew up on. That means running a successful business in a successful town, ideally one with just enough law and order to keep things running smoothly without really getting in his way. Pretty humble ambitions, and even then, he’s acutely aware that he’ll lose it all one day, most likely in bloody fashion. If Al meets his maker old and warm and well-fed, he’ll consider that a win.

That’s not to say he won’t grab what we can, when he can, and do whatever it takes to hang on to it. Al rarely hesitates to do what’s “necessary”, even when he’d rather not – and that’s what sets him apart from the rest of the characters. Deadwood’s other villains, and even its heroes, tend to commit their darkest deeds in the heat of the moment. Not Al. When Swearengen does something awful, it’s almost never on impulse; it’s deliberate, carefully weighed, and as passionless as it is remorseless. On the rare occasions when his emotions do get the better of him, they’re more likely to inspire a spontaneous act of mercy than one of violence, like the time he hesitates with his knife at Bullock’s throat, unable to do the deed because a “cow-eyed kid” is looking on.

So in theory, what we have here is a pretty bog-standard criminal with no special talents and no lofty ambitions, who surrounds himself with a group of fairly unremarkable henchmen and who isn’t, when push comes to shove, especially evil.

Now that I’ve spent the better part of a page laying out all the ways Al Swearengen shouldn’t qualify as a great villain, allow me to explain why he’s the Best Ever.

Put simply, it’s because he’s one of the most compelling characters ever to grace the small screen.

Look at those eyes, will ya?

To begin with, creator David Milch and his co-writers struck a delicate balance in keeping Al’s behaviour logically consistent without being predictable. There’s an imperfect, very human sort of coherence to him, such that even when he’s doing something unexpected, it’s in keeping with his character. Take, for example, his strong protective streak, which manifests itself in all sorts of interesting ways. Part of it is probably down to power: Al has it, and he enjoys wielding it, as anyone who was himself once under the boot tends to. But I think it’s more complicated than that.

As his backstory attests, Al attended the School of Hard Knocks. That made him resilient and ruthless, but it also creates a bond with his fellow SHK alumni. Seen through that lens, behaviour that at first seems puzzling starts to make sense. His rescuing of Jewel, for example, though her disability makes her unemployable as a whore. Or his insistence that Trixie keep learning accounting, even though her betterment means he risks losing her forever. Or his pep talk to the recently-assaulted newspaperman A.W. Merrick, which gives us one of the most celebrated scenes in the series. Even his mercy killing of an ailing priest owes to this hard-bitten worldview:

“You just gotta kill it and put an end to it. You don’t linger on about it. You don’t go around fucking weeping about it. … You gotta behave like a grown fucking man. … Don’t be sorry. Don’t look fucking back. Because, believe me, no one gives a fuck.”

This, too, is a pep talk – but for himself, steeling himself for what he knows needs to be done. The killing itself is both chilling and tender, with Al mechanically explaining to an underling how to smother a man (“like packing a snowball”) before whispering in the dying man’s ear, “You can go now, brother.” He emerges from the room visibly shaken, but when he realises Trixie is watching, he straightens and fixes her with a steely look, unwilling to show weakness.

His relationships are fascinating too. While most of Deadwood’s characters relate to each other in fairly straightforward ways, their dealings with Al are invariably complex and revealing. Take Seth Bullock. He quickly establishes himself as the biggest pain in Al’s balls – and precisely because of this, Al concludes that Bullock needs to be made sheriff. This will prove endlessly inconvenient, putting “his holiness” directly in Al’s path from time to time, but Swearengen is prepared to sacrifice short-term convenience for long-term gain, which he reckons Bullock will provide by lending legitimacy to the town, thus helping safeguard everything Swearengen has built. Nemesis and ally both, Bullock is also in a very real way Swearengen’s tool – or better yet, a weapon, one Al knows could blow up in his face at any time.

Or how about Alma Garret, whose husband Al murdered, and whose ward he ordered dead? He also tried to cheat her out of a massive gold claim, but now he’s thought of an even better use for it: as surety to establish Deadwood’s first bank, yet another cornerstone of the town he’s working so diligently to establish. Thus, by Season 3, we have Al vaulting (somewhat implausibly) over the balcony to protect Alma from a hail of bullets. Not because he’s a good guy, but because keeping her alive means keeping her bank open, which serves his interests. As for Alma, she has little choice but to accept his protection, and they end up with a mutual, grudging sort of respect.

There’s Trixie, his best friend, confidante, and sometime lover, whom he beats and very nearly kills. Dan, the cold-blooded killer who blubbers like a child when Al seems to favour another henchman. Johnny – sweet, dumb Johnny – who screws up left and right, but whose incompetence Al refuses to punish in any meaningful way.

Swearengen abuses each and every one of his people – physically, emotionally, and in Trixie’s case, sexually – and yet they love him. It’s twisted, fucked up, deeply unhealthy love – but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. So much so that when Doc Cochran delivers him from the brink of death, their reaction gives us this extraordinary scene:

And it’s not just his henchmen who succumb to Al’s undeniable charisma. He’s the unofficial mayor of Deadwood, the man to whom all turn in a crisis. It’s Al who chairs the meetings of the town’s notables, whether it’s to organise the response to an outbreak of smallpox or the town’s first elections.

I’ve often wondered whether Milch and co. always intended for the character to be the centre of gravity for the show, or if Ian McShane’s magnetic performance just dragged them into his orbit. (Probably a bit of both. The show was intentionally Shakespearean, but it’s hard to imagine another actor pulling off soliloquies while being serviced by his whores.) Regardless, the result is an incredibly textured character, who is by turns chilling, sympathetic, and hilarious – sometimes all at once.

Trixie sums it up best:

“There’s entries on both sides of the fucking ledger, is the fucking point.”

All this is in perfect keeping with the show’s gritty brand of realism. From the earliest episodes, Deadwood establishes itself as a place where bad people can do good things, and progress toward modernity is less a march than a bare-knuckled brawl. If the Bible shows salvation being delivered in a barn, Deadwood gives us civilization birthed in horseshit, mud, and moral quagmire. Which sounds about right to me.

OK, wow. I’ve let this one get away from me, haven’t I? And I could go on, believe me. So before I go entirely off the deep end, let’s get to The Machine.

Strengths: A remarkably strategic thinker, anticipating trends, reading human behaviour, and predicting how all of it will affect his interests – before formulating an appropriate counter-move. Has a keen eye for talent and knows how to use it to his advantage.

Weaknesses: A hair-trigger temper, an abundance of pride, and a deep-seated fear of showing weakness – the combination of which sometimes backs him into a corner, committing him to a fight he doesn’t really want. On the other hand, given to occasional flashes of sentimentality that undermine his long-term interests – including when it comes to choosing henchmen, some of whom are downright liabilities (I’m looking at you, Johnny).

Best Quote: Dear God, this is like choosing one of your children. If I have to pick a single sentence, it’s this: “You can’t cut the throat of every cocksucker whose character it would improve.” Words to live by.

Villain Points:

Lair: The Gem Saloon. What it lacks in elegance it makes up for in character(s). Inside, it’s a veritable petri dish of scumbags; outside, Al watches the world unfold from his balcony, sipping his coffee and surveying his domain like the Pope. Plus, it’s not every lair where a guy can get “12-pointed” (that is, impaled upon the antlers of a deer). 5 points.

Toys: A gun, a knife, and the severed head of a Sioux warrior. 3 points – for the severed head.

Henchmen: Stalwart Dan and clever Silas are easily worth 2 points apiece, and Trixie is worth another (her second point going to Team Bullock). Then there’s dim-witted Johnny. -3 points for him. Way to let the team down, bro. 3 points.

Intimidation factor: People literally shit themselves in Al’s presence. The only two people who aren’t afraid of him are Seth Bullock and Doc Cochran – and let’s face it, those guys are maniacs. 4 points.

Schemes - Scope: Survive, run a profitable business, get your town annexed to the USA. Modest, if impressively focused. 1 point.

Schemes - Complexity: Al plays the long game better than just about any villain I’ve seen, except perhaps Cersei Lannister. 4 points.

The White Witch should have been badass - but isn't.tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345295c269e201b7c8cd64a5970b2017-01-31T11:45:00+00:002017-01-31T17:12:14+00:00Jadis is a one-woman embodiment of the Bible’s Greatest Evil Hits.Erin

Let me say right out of the gate that the White Witch is not like any of the other baddies we’ve tackled so far. As a children’s villain, she’s not bogged down by pesky things like realism or complexity. She can be as powerful, as outrageous, as pure eeeeevil as she likes. That makes her both larger than life and somewhat two-dimensional. Even so, it would be a mistake to underestimate her. Like all things Narnia, her simplicity belies a strong theological and mythological pedigree. And, like the oldest fairy tales and nursery rhymes, though nominally intended for children, the White Witch is bloody horrifying.

To get the full picture, you really have to go back to the beginning of the tale – which is also the end of the tale, as it happens. Like many fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia were not penned in chronological order (nor were they published in the order in which they were penned, just for that added layer of confusion). Book 1 in the series, The Magician’s Nephew, is where the White Witch makes her official debut. But it was also the last of the books to be written, which means Lewis had some extra time to mull over and flesh out the sketch of a villain we meet in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It’s The Magician’s Nephew that gives us the bulk of the Witch’s backstory and insight into her character. It’s also where her theological significance is hammered home with Lewis’s trademark subtlety, but we’ll get to that later.

We first meet the Witch – or, to use her proper title, Her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands, etc. – in the ruined world of Charn. Magicked there by his unscrupulous uncle, young Digory quickly finds himself fascinated by this unfamiliar territory, an apocalyptic landscape un-coincidentally reminiscent of a world ravaged by nuclear war. Ignoring the advice of his friend and travelling companion, Polly, he strikes a bell and awakens Jadis from a millennium-plus of slumber. She rises from her throne, glances around, and demands to know who has broken the spell, only to discover that it’s just a pair of vermin children.

Jadis then does two things. First, she takes the kids on a quick tour of her palace. Quick, because the place is crashing down around their ears, but even so Jadis manages to cover the main points of interest: the dungeons, the torture chambers, certain massacres of historical significance. Then she blasts a huge set of doors off their hinges and bids the children remember it: “This is what happens to things, and to people, who stand in my way”. But wait, the tour is not quite over. Jadis leads the children to a scenic viewpoint overlooking the whole city – the great city, she calls it, the city of the King of Kings, the wonder of the world, perhaps of all worlds.

It doesn’t look all that wonderful now, mind you, since it’s an apocalyptic wasteland. That’s because Jadis annihilated theentire planet in a single breath. “I spoke the Deplorable Word. A moment later I was the only living thing beneath the sun.”

Holy shit, you guys.

This is the thing about children’s stories. They can be so casual about the genuinely horrific. Wolves gobble up poor defenceless grannies and little kids are fattened up and shoved into ovens. Real-world villains like Hans Gruber and Stringer Bell seem positively bush league by comparison. Murdered a handful of plebeians, did we? Please. The White Witch annihilated an entire world – every man, woman, and child, every bird, every blade of grass – all to preserve her throne. And the children’s reaction to this unspeakable atrocity? “It was rather hard luck on them, all the same,” says Digory.

The most striking thing about this nonchalant slaughter is that it’s not even important to the plot; it’s offered up purely as backstory. Jadis never gets up to anything remotely so heinous in the books themselves. In fact, in both Magician and Lion, etc. she’s remarkably ineffective. In part, this is because she never regains the power she wielded in Charn. On Earth, the most she can do is wave a chunk of lamppost around and call people moderately insulting names. Even in Narnia, her spells are largely confined to Enchant Candy and Conjure Chai Latté, and even these rely on some mysterious vial of liquid that she could have obtained anywhere. Without her magic wand – which, again, she could have picked up in Diagon Alley at her local pawnbrokers for all we know – she’s pretty useless. She never offers a real challenge to the all-powerful Aslan. But then again, maybe that was never her purpose.

If Aslan is obviously a Christ-like figure, and the children are Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, Jadis’s analogue in Christian mythology is less clear-cut. In some ways, she’s similar to Satan: just as the Devil lays claim to fallen souls, every traitor in Narnia belongs to Jadis as her lawful prey, and for every treachery she has the right to a kill. At other times, she plays the role of the Serpent, tempting Digory with forbidden fruit in the garden and using enchanted candy to convince Edmund to betray his siblings. And yet it’s Jadis herself who eats the fruit in the garden, as Eve did, and we’re told that she comes from the stock of Lilith, who is either Adam’s first wife or of demon stock, depending on which mythology you’re drawing from (Lewis appears to have drawn from more than one well). In other words, Jadis is a one-woman embodiment of the Bible’s Greatest Evil Hits.

Which, in theory, should be pretty badass, but alas – and this is the main reason she’s so ineffective – Her Imperial Majesty, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands, etc., is none too bright. Which is why she’s taken out of play early and easily in both books, and were it not for the treachery of Edmund, she’d have been bumped off about fifty pages earlier, leaving even more time for thrones and tea and bizarrely stilted dialogue. And speaking of the Witch’s demise, may I say that it counts among the lamest deaths in the history of villainhood. We don’t even see it, properly speaking; one moment the Lion and the Witch are tumbling to the ground and the next we’re told that the battle is over and the Witch dead. Apparently we’re fine with a whole page recounting the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people, but a lion killing a woman is beyond the pale.

Children’s stories. Seriously.

And now, The Machine.

Strengths: Beauty, brawn, and brains. On second thought, scratch the brains. When it comes to evil ingenuity, Jadis scores slightly below your average house cat. At least she has beauty and brawn to get her through. She can snap a lamppost with her bare hands, turn her enemies to stone, and enchant them with candy. Claims she can read minds but I’m not convinced. I read hers. It looked like this:

Weaknesses: Did I mention she has tumbleweed for brains? When she finally does get an idea in her head, she pursues it with relentless single-mindedness. Which is a shame, because her ideas are really dumb. As a result, she is repeatedly outfoxed by children and small animals.

Best Quote: “Despair and die.”

Villain Points

Lair: A grim castle littered with the petrified bodies of her enemies. That’s… a pretty good lair, actually. 5 points.

Henchmen: An army of ogres, wolves, bull-headed men, cruels and hags and incubuses, wraiths, horrors, efreets, sprites, orknies, wooses, and ettins. Oh, and some of the trees. 8 points.

Intimidation factor: Depends. In Narnia, she’s seven feet tall and can turn you to stone with a flick of her wrist. The animals certainly seem frightened of her. On Earth, though, people mostly just laugh at her. I’m going to average that out at 3.

Schemes - Scope: Jadis wants to conquer all the worlds that ever were. No shortage of ambition there. 10 points.

Schemes - Complexity: Oh sure, she has vision, but plans? Jadis can’t seem to think more than one move ahead. It’s like watching your four year-old niece play checkers, only the toddler has a better temperament. -5 points.

Overall Badass Rating: 26

As always, if there’s a villain you’d like to see put through The Machine, let us know in the comments!